Happy birthday Rich!!!!!!

It was another glorious day yesterday, got well into the into the 20 degrees apparently, which is highly unusual given we are verging on winter here. It was also Rich birthday !!!!!! We went out for dinner on Friday night and went for a wonderful hike yesterday.

I have organized for he and Luca to start sailing lessons as a birthday gift. They will start later in the year, and over the next couple of months some of the boats for the winter season need crew, so they are going to do that as well. Cool thing for them to do together, and as it is Rich’s biggest wish to have a little boat, this is a good start I thought.

These are from our hike yesterday…

A boy and his dog……

The is the Orokonui Trig that we climbed to, could not have asked for a better day for it.

LOVE this photo!!!!!!!!!!

That is Port Chalmers in the distance.

The boys give me such a hard time taking these family photos, because they take so long to set up, they are surprisingly difficult to get without cutting someone off! I know we will look back and be happy we have them though 🙂

Rich had a spectacular fall right after this was taken! It was a steep and slippery descent. He has the wound to show for it, luckily not too bad.

This is looking down on Purakanui, one of our favourite beaches. Maybe you can remember from previous posts, it is the one with the rope swing.

The wall goes on for ages, must have taken so long to build, it is really lovely and adds to the ambience of the whole area. There are lots of these dotted throughout NZ, a lot in the South Island I guess because there are lots of rocks to use!

When Pica gets tired she tucks herself in behind Rich to walk, it is a telling sign then that she is heading for home 🙂

After the hike Rich and Luca settled in to play some ice hockey ,(Rich’s favourite game), he won both games which made him happy, as usually Luca wins when it comes to these things 🙂

I usually get them matching t-shirts for one of their birthdays, this year I got them matching hats! They look fabulous!

I have been doing a lot of travelling for work lately and more to come. Last week I was in Invercargill and Balclutha, and in a couple of weeks I head to Queenstown. We are going to make the most of me heading there and all going to go so we can do the 70km bike trail between Arrowtown and Queenstown. We have not been away for a while , very much looking forward to it, fingers crossed the weather holds. While I am working the boys will do some of the Queenstown activities, and then we will do the trail over a couple of days, will be away 5 days in total.

Aria came for dinner a couple of weeks ago, it was good to see her, had been a while, she is very busy with University work but loving it! I had a friends 50th that weekend too in Oamaru, it was a big party and I was just too tired to drive back home so stayed up there the night. Oamaru feels very familiar to me now that I go so often for work, I am very fond of it, I am starting to feel that way about Balclutha as I spend more time there as well. The little villages are unique, different from each other, and of course from the larger towns and cities, working in them makes you quickly a part of the community, I feel very fortunate to have this opportunity.

Luca started back into the second term a couple of weeks ago and we had the first parent teacher interviews since starting high school. Covid had prevented this happening earlier, so we were very keen to get to this and meet all his teachers. Anyone who goes to these things in high school, will tell you the mad chaos it is trying to see all the teachers in 5 minute slots, along side hundreds of other parents, I really don’t know how the teachers do it! Fun times 🤣, but we are happy to now put teacher faces to names, and it was a good to get a better grasp on how high school works these days, VERY different to our day! Luca is doing great and has a good group of friends, was nice to meet some of them and their parents too.

The evenings have been warm and calm so fire pit season has started. We did a sausage sizzle up there the other night, the kids slept in the tree house, it must have been comfortable up there as they did not make it down until mid morning.

Last weekend we climbed Mt Cutten, it was a stunning day and so worth the strenuous climb! This is from the pinnacle looking out to the harbour entrance, that is Port Chalmers to the far right of the photo.

Pica heading in for a dip before the climb..

Such a happy girl, she loves days like this sooooo much!

Luca mid sentence trying to convince Rich and I of something no doubt 🙂

Snack and conversation time at the top while taking in the vista…

The house build is coming along!

This will be the view from Rich and my bedroom window. So nice to have a glimpse of the ocean from it…

Our window sill fill of tomatoes is slowly but surely diminishing. The table outside now has none left, they have ripened well doing it this way and enabled me to keep on top of using them without waste…

I have lost count of the number of trays of these I have done to make sauces, I did two more yesterday…

Now the window sill looks like this…

My leeks are all ready as well and I have had a good harvest from them. Chicken, leek and spinach pie a big favorite in this house. The spinach and carrots grow all year here, so I have a ready supply of them in the garden.

I will be making another one tonight, easy, nutritious and tasty!

I took this photo last week on a typical evening, (I am standing on our bed). I wanted a reminder of what we have lived in for the last almost 4 years. Next week the hallway entrance will be going in and the expansion into the bedroom area will begin. There have definitely been challenges living in this small space for so long, but I do highly recommend it for families. It teaches a lot of things, patience, compromise, consideration and it brings you closer as a family. Turns out we really do like each other and enjoy each others company 😊

The majority of the world live in small spaces like this and we are so privileged that we can add more space, but I also think we will lose something as we do it, and a part of me will grieve the loss of this. One of my favorite parts of the day is as we go sleep in our little “sleeping corner” and the last few words said as we drift off, this is just not going to be the same when we are in bedrooms…